A Treatise on the Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity

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Little, Brown, 1871 - Insanity - 658 pages

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Page 24 - ... to establish a defense on the ground of insanity it must be clearly proved that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was laboring under such a defect of reason from disease of the mind as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or, if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong.
Page 20 - ... must be considered in the same situation as to responsibility as if the facts with respect to which the delusion exists were real.
Page 19 - What are the proper questions to be submitted to the jury, where a person alleged to be afflicted with insane delusion respecting one or more particular subjects or persons, is charged with the commission of a crime (murder, for example), and insanity is set up as a defence?" And, thirdly, "In what terms ought the question to be left to the jury as to the prisoner's state of mind at the time when the act was committed?
Page 200 - Pray, do not mock me : I am a very foolish fond old man, Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less ; And, to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind.
Page 28 - Whether a party is guilty of negligence, or not, is a question of fact for the jury, and not a question of law for the court to decide, when the evidence tends to establish such negligence.
Page 30 - Neither delusion nor knowledge of right and wrong, nor design or cunning in planning and executing the killing and escaping or avoiding detection, nor ability to recognize acquaintances, or to labor, or transact business, or manage affairs, is as matter of law a test of mental disease ; but all symptoms and all tests of mental disease are purely matters of fact to be determined by the jury.
Page 33 - Our statutes may declare, as they do, that " no act done by a person in a state of insanity can be punished as an offence, and no insane person can be tried, sentenced to any punishment, or punished for any crime or offence while he continues in that state.
Page 24 - In order to be responsible, he must have sufficient power of memory to recollect the relation in which he stands to others, and in which others stand to him ; that the act he is doing is contrary to the plain dictates of justice and right, injurious to others, and a violation of the dictates of duty.
Page 220 - There may be an unseen ligament pressing on the mind, drawing it to consequences which it sees, but cannot avoid, and placing it under a coercion, which, while its results are clearly perceived, is incapable of resistance. The doctrine which acknowledges this mania is dangerous in its relations, and can be recognized only in the clearest cases. It ought to be shown to have been habitual, or at least to have evinced itself in more than a single instance.
Page 438 - ... opinion in the terms above stated, because each of those questions involves the determination of the truth of the facts deposed to, which it is for the jury to decide, and the questions are not mere questions upon a matter of science, in which case such evidence is admissible. But where the facts are admitted . or not disputed, and the question becomes substantially one of science only, it may be convenient to allow the question to be put in that general form, though the same cannot be insisted...

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